Immigration reform
The one thing I like about Bush's immigration proposal is that it has elicited an incredible amount of skepticism in organizations that work for immigrant and refugees rights, and at the same time has annoyed the right, as I found at craigslist:
Actually, it has surprised everyone: yahoo, cnn, reuters, the Miami herald, the SFO chronicle, the Guardian, the voice of America, wired, the LA Times, the NY journal, the mercury, and again the mercury; But please remember that it all started with some remarks from Tom Ridge, that incredibly alienated this right wing group, as well as this people, and gave hope to the people in NYcity; it made it to Salon and all!
Let's get real: This proposal was (past tense) simply part of the security measures contemplated as a result of the attacks on 9/11, a clear and logic extension of the need to have immigrants identified and accounted for: if, for some reason, the radical Muslims were to hide among the Latino community, it would have been almost impossible to root them out.
The undocumented Latino community is a gigantic subculture that lives completely outside the realm of the bureaucratic American apparatus: they are denied bank accounts, drivers licenses, and social security; they all pay taxes AND contribute to Social Security (these are automatically deducted from the paychecks), their work contracts, lease and car loans are, for the most part, agreements that occur with the least of documentation possible; there is permanent and amazingly cheap underground market for fake papers, good enough to get work; justice is usually denied, basically because there are no translators, and even medicine and health is a thing that only a few can enjoy. They are ghosts.
So obviously, again, Tom Ridge sees this, and proposes the national ID for immigrants (coming later to all citizens), and in the process, recognizing them and granting them their basic civil rights! Of course the right-wing groups are angry at this! imagine that eight million people, suddenly demanding to be respected and treated like human beings! What it would be to be paid more than the minimum wage for doing dangerous work! Imagine that, after decades of pouring billions of dollars into the bankrupt American Social Security system, they are actually getting what they are paying for! Imagine sending their kids to school, and having them actually learning instead of sitting in a corner because their teachers can easily dismiss the children of undocumented immigrants!
It all boils down to one thing: Granting them ID will lead to the recognition of more than eight million people as that, as people, with rights and voice and responsibilities as well.
How many will go the route of registering, if it ever becomes an option, and how many decide to remain hiding, is crucial to the effectiveness of Ridge's and Bush's proposals: right now, the undocumented immigrants can remain under the radar, and when their employer finally decides to get rid of them, and it will happen, they can simply move on to the next low paying job. If they register, it will mean that, after three years of creating a life here, they would have to leave. Not a happy prospect. Instead, and what many organizations are asking for, is a true register by which they are granted the possibility of applying for residentship, and the absolute and clear imperative to add to those proposals a way to reunite families and to recognize that many of these immigrants have been living for many years here. It is not so much that they don't want to go, it is that they cannot go! Where to? To what? Their lives are here, their children are here, their social network is here.
Failure to recognize the rights of people, even though they are aliens, will mean that this country will continue its long run in becoming a mirror image of its old enemies, having a second class population, a disposable one that has existence only for three years.
The United States can benefit immensely from acknowledging those immigrants, and by granting them rights and voices incorporating them into the mainstream, not only for national security reasons, but because in doing so these communities will surely revitalize, energize and give an impulse to a country that is in dire need of accepting that its strength come from its diversity.